Lark About

A rainbow did its thing.

Today was especially pretty.

You little firecracker. #dollseyes #whitebaneberry #actaea #actaeapachypoda #illinois #illinoisplants #illinoiswildflowers #wildflower #nativeplants

Doll's eyes/white baneberry was on a tear in the woods over the weekend. #dollseyes #whitebaneberry #actaea #actaeapachypoda #ranunculaceae #woodland #woodlandplants #illinois #illinoiswildflowers #nativeplants #wildflowers

Floral color variation in adjacent violet patches. They're all just doing their thing, living their best lives. #violets #violasoroia #violaceae #wildflowers

While having your fruits dispersed by critters is often part of plants' reproductive strategy, they rarely benefit from losing leaves to herbivory. So if you were a plant, you'd want to research the cost/benefits for different strategies, and consider investing in a decent anti-herbivory portfolio. You could produce secondary metabolites that taste terrible or are toxic. You could grow a bunch of thorns, spines, or trichomes. Or you could just make yourself look too sketchy for visually discerning herbivores to eat. Leaf variegation occurs variably in Virginia waterleaf plants (Fig. 1: an attractive example), and when it does occur, it's only seen on early-season leaves. A 2008 study on the anti-herbivory impact of variegation in waterleaf plants found that plain leaves sustained twice the herbivory damage as speckled leaves.* Variegation can mimic the look of unhealthy leaves, and can also camouflage the leaf in dappled light conditions of spring. It's also just kind of a great look, aesthetically? Virginia waterleaf doesn't feel the need to sacrifice style OR practicality and YES it did wake up like this. *Campitelli, Stehlik, and Stinchcombe. 2008. Leaf variegation is associated with reduced herbivore damage in Hydrophyllum virginianum. Botany 86: 306-313.

"Was that what it was really like to be alive? The feeling of darkness dragging you forward? How could they live with it? And yet they did, and even seemed to find enjoyment in it, when surely the only sensible course would be to despair. Amazing. To feel you were a tiny living thing, sandwiched between two cliffs of darkness. How could they stand to be alive? Obviously it was something you had to be born to." -Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

Never so pretty a crime scene.

I like violets. There's a discreet primness about them, which I relate to, and yet they can also be weedy, which makes them occasionally kind of assholes, which I also relate to. The top two are probably both V. sororia, one from a colony with a lot of red tones and the other from a colony a few meters away with mostly white petals. Bottom two are V. bicolor and V. pubescens.

Seriously you guys get your shit together.

A shoal of trout lilies. It's about to get wild here. #troutlily #woodlandplants #illinoisplants #wildflowers #springephemerals #nativewildflowers

Look at these adorable little nuggets. #christmasfern #ferns #woodlandplants #illinoisplants

"Life is a windfall from a dying star. The sun's energy comes to us through the metabolism of green plants. Ecologically, plant and animal species are a part of a larger whole, a system which in itself is the ultimate unit of survival, for it maintains the continuous flow of energy and nutrients necessary for life... Even casual study of an ecosystem reveals an abiding truth--that the relationships between things are as important as the things themselves. Living things have meaning in terms of what they do. Life does not know the dancer from the dance." - Dr. Robert O. Petty in "Eastern Deciduous Forest," 1974.

Robert O. Petty and Torkel Korling, Eastern Deciduous Forest, 1974.

Small-flowered buttercup (mystery plant of last week), with a big rosette of great mullein lurking in the background.

Damn you, bloodroot!! Why must you toy with my heart?!

Some of the wild ginger around here is blooming. I spent a bit of time all up in multiple plants' businesses trying to get a good shot up in the inside of the flowers. And tbh this is a flower that made that seem v. inappropriate.